The meeting with the Sri Lankan migrant leaders in Rome was very successful as they showed much interest when BASUG leadership placed its plan to organise financial literacy training for their community in Italy. This initiative is something unique undertaken by a Diaspora organisation on the issue Remittance. It may be mentioned that BASUG leaders paid a visit to Italy see for themselves the ground work for the forthcoming Remittance workshop to be held in Rome on 30 May 2010. They held two separate meetings with the community leaders of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh living in Rome on 2 and 3 March 2010.

The International Conference on “Engaging Diaspora as Development Partners: Migration and Remittance” was a unique effort of BASUG-Bangladesh Support Group, a Netherlands-based Diaspora organization with representations in a number of European countries and Bangladesh. It has succeeded in blending serious discussion on challenging issues of engaging expatriates to national development with presenting snapshots of rich cultural heritage of Bangladeshi Diaspora in the Netherlands. The Conference had a cultural evening that complemented discussions during the day.